While Delaware has not experienced a deadly hate crime of the magnitude seen in Pittsburgh over the weekend, these incidents are increasing in the First State.

The number of hate crimes reported by Delaware police to federal authorities slightly increased, according to the FBI's most recent numbers. The Anti-Defamation League Philadelphia said it saw a spike in the number of antisemitic incidents in Delaware.

The group, which has been tracking antisemitic incident since 1979, said it saw 13 across the state – four times as many as the previous year and more than double the previous high of the decade.

"The total number may seem small but in the context of where the numbers have been over the last decade and longer it was actually a very troubling sign," said Jeremy Bannett, ADL Philadelphia's associate regional director, which covers Delaware. "It's showing that these incidents are on the rise and it's something that we need to monitor."

There were 15 reported hate crime incidents reported in Delaware in 2016, the most recent numbers provided by the FBI. This tied with 2011, which saw a drop of such incidents from 2010 which had 20 hate crimes reported.

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Police responding to reports of a bomb threat targeting the Siegel Jewish Community Center in Talleyville in March 2017.(Photo: JOHN J. JANKOWSKI JR./SPECIAL TO THE NEWS JOURNAL)

Delaware's most commonly reported hate crime in 2016 was motivated by race, ethnicity or ancestry – there were 12 such incidents. Three hate crimes were related to religion, while one was because of sexual orientation.

Last year's figures are expected to be released next month.

Antisemitism

The Siegel Jewish Community Center received multiple bomb threats. A court in Israel convicted Michael Ron David Kadar for making a string of bomb threats to Jewish community centers around the world, including the one in Talleyville. The U.S. Justice Department has filed hate crime charges against 19-year-old Kadar.

Gerard Medvec, a 64-year-old Delaware City resident, recently was arrested for threatening his neighbors, who he believed were Muslims trying to hurt him.(Photo: Delaware City Police)

Hate crimes reported in Delaware are few, but when they occur it places a strain on a community.

"When there are even low-key acts of hatred against others, it represents a breakdown in civil society and in how we treat other people," said Jennifer Steinberg co-chair the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Delaware.

Steinberg said it is important to let the public know when acts of hatred occur. It doesn't matter how small.

"Anything that really prohibits you from feeling you can speak openly, is a problem for society in general," she said. "It also prevents us from having an important conversation that we need to have."

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A children’s playground near New Castle was spray-painted with "KKK." New Castle County police are investigating.(Photo: Alonzo Small/The News Journal)

The KKK

While the Ku Klux Klan is active in Delaware, the organization didn't really grow deep roots to grab the attention of such hate group monitors as the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The center instead identifies two other organizations has being hate groups: ACT for America, an anti-Muslim group based in Bear; and the Nation of Islam, a black nationalist organization based in Wilmington.

The Klan never gained a real foothold in post-Civil War Delaware, when "night riders" terrorized black people in the former Confederate states. Although Delaware was a slave state that voted against Abraham Lincoln in both his presidential races, it did not secede from the Union.

That meant, unlike Confederate states, Delaware was not subjected to Reconstruction and the white backlash that sparked the birth of the Klan in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee.

Delaware Democrats, proudly billing themselves as "the white man's party," ruled the state in the postwar years – and they quickly began passing laws that severely limited the activities of its black population.

With black residents denied any meaningful political or economic clout, whites saw no need for a Ku Klux Klan here.

Although modern Delawareans tend to think of hate groups in terms of race, some of the earliest clashes in Delaware were between settlers of English and Scots-Irish origin.

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Richard Preston, imperial wizard of the Confederate White Knights, speaks at a meeting near Elkton, Md., in 2013. Preston has been arrested on charges of shooting a weapon amid the crowd at the Charlottesville, Va., rally earlier this month.(Photo: WILLIAM BRETZGER/THE NEWS JOURNAL)

Race became the primary concern of white Delawareans in the 1830s, after Nat Turner's slave rebellion in Virginia rocked slave-holding states and prompted legislation that curtailed even the rights of free blacks.

Legislators built on those statutes in the Civil War postwar years, and it wasn't until the 1920s that the Klan became somewhat of a force in Delaware.

In 1915, the Klan was reborn as a "mystic, social, patriotic" group dedicated to protecting white womanhood and white supremacy. It later included Jews, Catholics, foreigners and organized labor on its list of undesirables.

In 1922, two Klan units formed in Newport, and its rolls included members from the Newport, Marshallton, Five Points and Christiana school boards. A year later, Newport Klansmen and local Catholics engaged in a brawl when the Klan tried to burn a cross in New Castle.

Also in 1923, the Elk Klan Klavern formed in Childs, Maryland, northeast of Elkton. Cecil County remained a Klan stronghold for decades.

White People's movement

With World War II looming, the Klan fell into disrepute nationally and locally when it was linked to fascist and pro-German groups.

It reappeared in the 1950s and 1960s, after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation in public schools.

But in Delaware, it wasn't the Klan that took up the segregationist cause: It was the National Association for the Advancement of White People, led by a rabble-rousing Floridian named Bryant Bowles.

Four months after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, Bowles helped engineer one of the more shameful episodes of Delaware's troubled racial past, calling massive rallies in September 1954 to protest the admission of 11 black 10th-graders to the all-white Milford High School.

Bowles was fond of incendiary rhetoric, and he stirred the all-white crowds by holding his 3-year-old daughter over his head and vowing that she "never would attend school with Negroes as long as there is gunpowder to burn – and gunpowder will burn."

But gunpowder did not burn, at least not in Delaware. Though the crisis delayed integration of Milford High School for eight years.

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Attendees listen to Richard Preston, Imperial Wizard of the Confederate White Knights - A Ku Klux Klan group- speak at a meeting Friday, Dec. 20, 2013 at the Cecil County Administration Building near Elkton, Md. Preston said his group was not a hate group and did not have a problem with people of color, but had goals such as changing immigration policy and impeaching President Barack Obama because they feel he is not a citizen.(Photo: WILLIAM BRETZGER/The News Journal)

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People gather for a community vigil honoring the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims Sunday on the North Green at the University of Delaware. Many regional religious and political leaders spoke at the event. Jerry Habraken, The News Journal

People gather for a community vigil honoring the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims Sunday on the North Green at the University of Delaware. Many regional religious and political leaders spoke at the event. Jerry Habraken, The News Journal

People gather for a community vigil honoring the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims Sunday on the North Green at the University of Delaware. Many regional religious and political leaders spoke at the event. Jerry Habraken, The News Journal

People gather for a community vigil honoring the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims Sunday on the North Green at the University of Delaware. Many regional religious and political leaders spoke at the event. Jerry Habraken, The News Journal

People gather for a community vigil honoring the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims Sunday on the North Green at the University of Delaware. Many regional religious and political leaders spoke at the event. Jerry Habraken, The News Journal

People gather for a community vigil honoring the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims Sunday on the North Green at the University of Delaware. Many regional religious and political leaders spoke at the event. Jerry Habraken, The News Journal

People gather for a community vigil honoring the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims Sunday on the North Green at the University of Delaware. Many regional religious and political leaders spoke at the event. Jerry Habraken, The News Journal

People gather for a community vigil honoring the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims Sunday on the North Green at the University of Delaware. Many regional religious and political leaders spoke at the event. Jerry Habraken, The News Journal

People gather for a community vigil honoring the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims Sunday on the North Green at the University of Delaware. Many regional religious and political leaders spoke at the event. Jerry Habraken, The News Journal

People gather for a community vigil honoring the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims Sunday on the North Green at the University of Delaware. Many regional religious and political leaders spoke at the event. Jerry Habraken, The News Journal

People gather for a community vigil honoring the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims Sunday on the North Green at the University of Delaware. Many regional religious and political leaders spoke at the event. Jerry Habraken, The News Journal

People gather for a community vigil honoring the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims Sunday on the North Green at the University of Delaware. Many regional religious and political leaders spoke at the event. Jerry Habraken, The News Journal

People gather for a community vigil honoring the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims Sunday on the North Green at the University of Delaware. Many regional religious and political leaders spoke at the event. Jerry Habraken, The News Journal

People gather for a community vigil honoring the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims Sunday on the North Green at the University of Delaware. Many regional religious and political leaders spoke at the event. Jerry Habraken, The News Journal

People gather for a community vigil honoring the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims Sunday on the North Green at the University of Delaware. Many regional religious and political leaders spoke at the event. Jerry Habraken, The News Journal

People gather for a community vigil honoring the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims Sunday on the North Green at the University of Delaware. Many regional religious and political leaders spoke at the event. Jerry Habraken, The News Journal

People gather for a community vigil honoring the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims Sunday on the North Green at the University of Delaware. Many regional religious and political leaders spoke at the event. Jerry Habraken, The News Journal

People gather for a community vigil honoring the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims Sunday on the North Green at the University of Delaware. Many regional religious and political leaders spoke at the event. Jerry Habraken, The News Journal

People gather for a community vigil honoring the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims Sunday on the North Green at the University of Delaware. Many regional religious and political leaders spoke at the event. Jerry Habraken, The News Journal

People gather for a community vigil honoring the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims Sunday on the North Green at the University of Delaware. Many regional religious and political leaders spoke at the event. Jerry Habraken, The News Journal